This patent was applied for in 2009. I'm assuming Apple's engineers were working on the tech for some time prior to the patent being filed. The article you linked to is from 2011. So, in this case, it's not prior art.

Cable TV is still worth it if your household includes someone who is a fan of audiovisually presented national news (e.g. MSNBC, Fox News, HLN)

It's called NPR (npr.org) and you can stream it for free... if you feel guilty you can even make an annual donation that is a FRACTION of what Comcast charges.

or those live sports that are not on the farmer five but still blacked out online (e.g. ESPN, Versus).

It's called a sports bar. Most neighborhoods have them. They usually have AC, big TVs, a few good looking waitresses, and hot wings. No dishes, no cooking, and you might actually make some new friends.

Sure, you actually have to put some pants on in order to watch the big game. But, seriously, do you really watch a lot of sports in your underwear?

Oh, and getting live sports through sports bar is still cheaper than getting them at home via Comcast.

You're supposed to FAILOVER between them, not load balance between them.

You can't hold amazon accountable for your own stupidity.

Beyond that, you have to ask yourself the question: how many outages would you have had with your own facility in the past year compared to this outage? Did you apply the same approach to your use of EC2 as you would to your own facility?

This is exactly why Apple doesn't want third-party UI systems on the iPad. They make their own business decision to improve their UI (something Google has needed for some time and something Google needs in order to survive against the likes of Bing) and now they are getting bad press because some lazy programmer can't figure out how to scrape their search results.

Intermediation is not a right. Businesses should have the right to engage with their customers without third-parties trying to intervene.

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @11:02AM
from the let's-vote-on-this-instead dept.

Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"

Actually, when he uses "proprietary" he means what he says: controlled by a private entity.

Jobs makes the point that Apple has plenty of proprietary technologies as well. However, HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are not proprietary. Even Adobe themselves are a part of the HTML5 spec process. You can join in that process today by either getting involved in the standards process or by writing code (as Apple has done) to support those standards. In fact, not only has Apple been a part of supporting those standards, they've also made their code open source and it is now being used by a wide range of their competitors in their competitors devices.

Go back and watch the iAd demo. Those ads were all created in HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and h.264 video. Compare those ads to most apps in the app store and then ask yourself why so many of those app developers didn't go the HTML5-route in writing their code considering that their Apps would then be cross-platform enabled (since Android uses WebKit as well).

The only reason to build a device-specific App is to take advantage of device-specific features. If you're building something akin to what is being delivered in the iAd demos, why are you bothering?

The iPhone supported sending pictures taken on the phone using the built-in email client from the very beginning. The best part: this feature was basically free (you'd already paid for the data service regardless).

Does the company have an existing dress code? Do the IT guys follow that dress code well?

Let's be honest: IT guys have a reputation for being a bit sloppy. If that's the case here, perhaps the right approach would be for the team to do a better job of looking professional.

But if the team is already meeting the same expectations as the other employees, this just sounds like a giant waste of time. Money, energy and resources wasted on this would probably be better spent on something worthwhile that would actually have an impact on the team's ability to provide quality service.